The Common Good Through Learning Communities

FAIN: AE-256343-17

Holyoke Community College (Holyoke, MA 01040-1099)
James Dutcher (Project Director: January 2017 to March 2020)
Diane L. Beers (Project Director: March 2020 to October 2022)
Mary Orisich (Co Project Director: March 2020 to October 2022)

A two-year project to develop inter-institutional learning communities.

Holyoke Community College (HCC) will partner with other colleges nearby, and also with a university in China, to offer five co-taught, interdisciplinary learning communities (LCs), two per semester over five semesters, two times each. Each LC will be designed by, and taught by, one professor from HCC and one professor from another college. Enrollment in each LC will include students from HCC and the other college. Classes will be held on both campuses and supplemented by an online component (exclusively on-line with China). These five new LCs will be anchored in the humanities and will foster inter-disciplinary and inter-campus teaching, learning, and collaboration. We will offer a workshop at the beginning of the grant period to work on LC design, including working with “digital humanities,” with a symposium at the end of the grant period to discuss what we have learned and where to go next.